So we’re into 2H’19 (where did the time go?), and hopefully 1H was a good one for you!
We now produce so much content on SaaStr, we thought we’d share the Top 20 Posts of 2019, so far. The stuff that resonated with our community the most.
#1. The Ultimate Guide to Scaling, Sales & Raising Capital (i.e., a PDF of Our Top 100 Answers on Quora). This eBook was our top performing post and page overall. If you haven’t downloaded it, it’s pretty awesome.
#2. How Would a Person Start a Venture Capital Fund? People do seem to want to know. The greener grass.
#3. The $1 Billion+ ARR Club. A look at who is at, or approaching $1b ARR. Cloud is on fire!
#4. 5 Interesting Learnings from Zoom as It IPOs. If you are selling to SMBs, this is a really good post with a lot of data. Some of which you might not expect.
#5 Why a Great Rep Can Close 9x More Than a Poor Rep, and even 2.5x More Than a Good Rep. Important math and SaaS sales physics here to understand.
#6. Growth and Burn Rates at $1m ARR for 20+ Fast-Growing SaaS Companies. Some good and surprising data in here.
#7. ServiceNow Closed 678 New $1m+ Deals. Just Last Year. A look at what it takes to do enterprise SaaS sales at scale.
#8. A Step-by-Step Guide to Revenue Growth with Mark Roberge, ex-CRO at Hubspot. A top-rated session from Annual, transcribed.
#9. Keith Rabois on Building Amazing Teams. This was actually an early SaaStr Annual session with me that blew up a bit on HackerNews. It is really awesome on the challenges and trade-offs in building amazing teams. Highly recommended.
#10. Why Your Cost of Sales Generally Doubles as You Scale. Something to really understand, especially if it’s early and everything seems pretty capital efficient.
#11. About 70% of SaaS Unicorns Are New Versions of Existing Categories of Software. So most of us aren’t doing something new, just something a lot better than before.
#12. You Should Be Collecting At Least 100% Of Your MRR Each Month in Cash. Ideally, 110%+. So many SaaS start-ups get collections wrong. And dig themselves into a hole because of it.
#13. 5 Interesting Learnings From Slack As It IPOs (Er, Direct Lists). Slack is more enterprise than most folks probably think. More data here.
#14. What Your First 100 Hires Will Look Like. A classic that folks read a lot in 1H. This is how your team will look at 100 folks.
#15. What’s A Typical Price Increase I Can Expect When Renewing A SaaS Subscription? Raising pricing on existing customers is complicated.
#16. Why Some SaaS Companies Stall Out at $20m ARR. Not all ARR is created equal. More on why here.
#17. What Order Should You Hire Your Management Team In? Get it right, you grow faster.
#18. Exhibiting at Events is Expensive. Very Expensive. Here are 9 Reasons You Should Do The Top Ones. Getting field marketing right is hard, but it’s also the #1 channel for customer acquisition and pipeline influence in SaaS. More learnings here.
#19. The Age of the $1 Billion+ SaaS Acquisition Has Just Begun. These are the Best of Times in SaaS, for sure.
#20. The Top 10 Mistakes First-Time SaaS Founders Make. Use this checklist. Just make fewer of these mistakes and life will be much better.
